Lexus Touts Lineup With Always-On Strategy

Lexus is
marketing all of its cars on a regular basis this year to give each nameplate some stage time. That, almost by necessity, means a lot of digital and affinity marketing like the program the company has
just launched for its CT, a hybrid powertrain car and Lexus' smallest vehicle. Brian Bolain, corporate marketing manager, spoke to Marketing Daily about the campaign and the larger
cross-portfolio strategy.

A: The market is tough, and none of our cars can just survive on their own. We had to do our part, so an
always-on approach really helps us to get there. As a strategy of promoting vehicles like ES, GS, IS, CT, and GX, we had to rethink and take a horizontal view and say it's not just what is going to
happen this month, but every month for the next 12 or 18 months, for every car in the lineup. We had to do it even for our so-called niche vehicles, which need to have advertising as well.

Q: As the Lexus portfolio expands, and especially with the addition of a performance-oriented entity, F-Sport, have you expanded the Lexus marketing organization as
well?

A: It would be nice to be able to make our marketing organization bigger, but luckily, the way we are set up, digital, social media, advertising and strategic
digital are all in my organization, so it really feels like all the key cogs on the marketing wheel are well aligned. We are pretty lucky structurally.

Q: You recently
launched the latest version of the CT hybrid. How important is that vehicle for getting new people to look at Lexus?

A: About 90% of CT buyers are new to the brand, so it
really serves an important role. It has our highest conquest level, followed by IS [Lexus' sport-sedan model]. Both are bringing us newer, younger buyers. The median age for IS has shifted to the low
40s, and we are selling a mix of cars [in that model] that is surprising even to us: the F-Sport version of IS is selling at 45% of the mix around the country so there's definite acceptance of the
idea that Lexus can have a performance side.

Q: Where are they coming from?

A: Reports from our third-party data company that tracks inflow
and outflow of customers show that inflow is rising slightly from people coming to us from our German competitors.

Q: Besides performance, there's also relatively new
vehicle design language for Lexus, which you’ve been activating against
(including with Lexus Design Disrupted last fall).

A: Design Disrupted was one of the most successful programs we have done from a metrics perspective. It's not just what we did there physically, but the earned media we
got.

Q: So I assume you'll do it again this year (or something like it)?

A: There are proposals to do more things like that this year,
since we are launching the RC Coupe. It's fairly masculine, so there has been some talk of maybe doing something like [Fashion Deconstructed] but maybe with a bit more of a male focus, which hasn't
been done before.

Q: The Web site redesign is coming as well? Why does it need a total redo?

A: It's been a while, and with the rest of the
brand feeling so modern it just felt like our site, which gets a couple of million new unique visits per month, just needs to be modernized as well. Around the May time period there will be a big
change; there will be enhancements this year. What we have done in out-of-home, broadcast, print and in-store, and in cars you will now feel in the digital space. It is also being built to be
responsive, so it will recognize whatever device consumers are using — it will function equally well across devices.